Feature Match - Round 1:

Toby Wachter

What happens when you take Mirrodin's heavy artifact theme and combine it with Urza Block's explosive mana, Tinker and Goblin Welder? Pure insanity. As always, there's a heavy buzz around the first day of the Extended Pro Tour, as everyone wants to know who has done the best job breaking the format. In this feature match between recent Pro Tour Champion William Jensen and Pro Tour Nice Champion Eivind Nitter, we saw a perfect example of just how huge Mirrodin's impact on the format is. Jensen's deck is based around the Mana Severance/Goblin Charbelcher kill combo, supported by Mystical Tutor and Tinker. Nitter's deck also has Tinker, along with a splash of red for Goblin Welder, which can bring back Mindslaver enough times to turn a regular game of Magic into Solitaire.

On Nitter's next turn of being a spectator, Jensen let the Masticore and Welder die. On end step, he cast Mystical Tutor to get Mana Severance, which took all the lands out of his deck. Luckily for Nitter, he now got to control his own turns. He cast Tinker to get Bosh, Iron Golem, and yet another Tinker on the following turn to get Gilded Lotus. Rack and Ruin took out Jensen's Grim Monolith along with Nitter's artifact land. Just when Jensen seemed to be a turn away from losing to a Bosh attack and "chuck", he cast Mystical Tutor to get Rushing River, bouncing Nitter's Gilded Lotus and Bosh, which annihilated his board position. With only two lands and no threats out, Nitter had to essentially start from scratch, although he drew into Metalworker to help things along. Jensen used Tinker to get Goblin Charbelcher, with was representing a lethal activation thanks to Mana Severance. Nitter handled the problem by attacking with the Metalworker to bring Jensen to two life, where he couldn't use his Ancient Tomb to activate the Charbelcher, and was short one mana to do it otherwise. Nitter's next attack brought Jensen to one, and he cast Brainstorm, looking for the one mana source he needed to activate the Charbelcher. It wasn't there, and he conceded.